Between Cave and Clean Air

Most everyone is in the cave. It’s dark and we’re looking at shadows we are convinced are real. There are others puppeteering behind the scenes. It’s a depressing situation, but most people get it a little, even though they might not have ever seen the light. People know that they aren’t living in absolute truth. They also have a sense that to escape the cave, or at least try to do so, will be grossly unpleasant. When we approach Plato’s cave, we usually dwell on the dilemma of the people chained, and the situation of the majority who have not seen the Good. But the allegory is just as much about the one who has seen the light, the philosopher, as it is about the people who remain in chains. In fact, this is the story of the tragedy of philosophy, or more, the tragedy of the philosopher.

Socrates
called himself a midwife who helped others give birth, hopefully not to “wind-eggs”
but to good and healthy children. As a midwife, he could not shout or engage in
the vicious, sneering type of debate of our current mode, because that would
cause the would-be mothers to clutch up and not deliver. Socrates served as
lover. He inseminated and he nurtured patiently, and he brought to life at
least a few quite impactful progenies. One man followed him so loyally that he
wrote up in a lifetime of work the essence of his intellect and heart, inasmuch
as he could. Another man could not completely follow his philosophical path because
he could not reign in his passions well enough, but he loved Socrates, despite
his famously imperfect face and form, with an unreasonable desire because, ultimately,
Socrates was not easy.

Socrates,
perhaps, would agree at least agree with Lacan in this, that the Real (or more
like it, a feature of the Real) is ab-sex.
He patiently revealed that Love leads through the partial and illusory, through
pain and confusion, to the cause of Love itself. So, this good and gentle
Socrates, or from Alcibiades’ perspective this heartless and cruel Socrates—why
did they kill him?

As a
child, perhaps Socrates was watching the shadows, and he was entertained. But
at some point, probably in his teens, he gleaned that something, someone, was behind
those shadows—there was more going on than met the eye. When he “turned around,”
when he was forced to turn—by some mysterious someone– he saw the men with
power, the men willing to live most of their lives in the same cave just so
they could feel the power of making a world for the others and holding them in
chains. And for a while, he no doubt stared at these men, and he thought that they
were the reality of the world.

Socrates
said that turning around is a painful
thing—a man’s whole body has been chained in one position his whole life, and
so just turning his head is a painful act, and then seeing the fire behind the
men who are making the shadows pierces his eyes. There is a great deal of confusion—was
what he saw before the reality, or is what he’s seeing now, what’s causing him
pain—is this the real world?

Those chains
didn’t come off all by themselves. There’s that other person involved, and Socrates
says that this whomever drags him by
force past all of this, past the fire, past the powerful men, upward. He doesn’t
want to go, but someone’s making him—is it the force of arms or the force of
logic? Someone is forcing him out of the cave and, for the first time in his
life, his half-blind eyes see the outside world. It’s so bright. It’s so confusing.
His eyes can’t handle it. He’s stunned, and he waits a long time for his sight
to adjust. This is world-transforming light. He’s able to see the colors, the true
motions, eventually the sun’s rays themselves. And notice, now the machinations
of the shadow-throwers mean so little to him that it’s hard to even think about
them.

And yet
so many prisoners are left in the cave.

Even
though he now exists in a dazzling world, a world that now has hold of him,
that erases the cave, well, he’s alone. It seems the guy that dragged
him out split. The guy doesn’t hang around and say, “come with me to the Island
of the Enlightened where your community awaits.” How nice but ultimately false
that would be. The former prisoner is on his own, and that is the most
excruciating pain. “My God, whom will I love, and who will love me? I have pity
on all those who are chained—can I free them? Not only for their sake but for my
own, because I don’t want to be alone.”

And so,
he attempts to descend, to try to free others. But the cave is now exceedingly
dark to him—it’s very hard to navigate, even though the fire is still burning.
But he persists, and when he gets to his former cell-mates, he appears dazed
and crazy. He is “the source of laughter…. And if they were somehow able to get
their hands on and kill the man who attempts to release and lead up, wouldn’t
they kill him?”

Meaning,
if laughter and disrespect is all you get, thank your lucky stars. But here is
the source of the most bitter pain, the hardest job, to stay in that moment and,
despite their jeers and threats, try to do what someone (or something) did for
you.

Do you
discern the patience, the love, that Socrates felt for the damned? When homely,
old, but infinitely wiser and hence more beautiful Socrates told Alcibiades he
could lie beside him and on the other side Agathon could lie, did he exercise
the utmost in self-control for the sake of Love, able to love them both while
not even being capable of being pulled by either one of them into the chained space
of the cave? Is it possible that he could live in both worlds, more truly in
one, but also truly enough in the other, and feel the dank earth beneath his
feet while breathing the perfumed oxygen from above?

Will
the one who freed him come back and stay by his side? Surely, but the longing
for others will not abate, because they are his brothers and sisters. Can he
live in both worlds and enjoy them both, while realizing that on one side the only
hope for connection is narrative but on the other side, the story fades in
favor of reality itself?

I
suspect he must live this way and accepting that may be the only way he stays
sane, because there remains the fact that he came from the cave, and part of
him will always live there, oscillating, unsettled.